


Here I Am (Come and Take Me)

by dogeared



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Community: mcsmooch, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-17
Updated: 2010-01-17
Packaged: 2017-10-06 09:53:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/52389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dogeared/pseuds/dogeared
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John doesn't kiss Rodney in the morning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here I Am (Come and Take Me)

**Author's Note:**

> for Cate (and her prompt that "one of them bets the other one that they can't go a whole day without kissing them")

John doesn't kiss Rodney in the morning. Rodney comes to bed late and John is up and out early, and Rodney doesn't even hear him leave. When he wakes up later, alone in a bright room with cool sheets, he tells himself that he's just as happy not to have had his much-needed sleep disturbed by John's usual goodbye.

Rodney doesn't kiss John when he sees him at breakfast, which isn't so unusual, since it's not like they generally make a habit of public displays of affection in the mess. He tries to focus on his oatmeal, on what Teyla's saying, and not on the long line of John's neck, the skin below his ear that Rodney knows is soft and sensitive.

Rodney doesn't kiss it better when John shows up in the lab, pouting and sweaty in his workout clothes, and shoves his red, raw-looking elbow under Rodney's nose, though he's seized by the strange, fond urge to do just that. Instead, he says, "I'm not your _mother_, Sheppard. Maybe you should tell Ronon not to play so rough," and flaps his hand at Zelenka until he sighs and opens his drawer and gives John a band-aid.

John doesn't kiss Rodney when they're standing shoulder to shoulder in the transporter.

Rodney doesn't kiss John after the senior staff meeting's over, when everyone else has cleared out and they're the only two people left around the table.

John doesn't kiss Rodney before he heads off on a 'jumper run to the mainland, which gives Rodney a little time and space to think about all the not-kissing.

How often do they kiss in the span of a normal day, anyway? Three times? Four? Five? And how long did he go without, before this, before there was a _them_? More than days, certainly. Weeks and weeks. Months and months and months, all adding up.

When he thinks about it that way, the whole thing starts to feel like the worst kind of careless waste.

He's waiting for John in the 'jumper bay when he gets back, a rant about juvenile bets and squandered opportunities and the wild unpredictability of life on the tip of his tongue as he crowds John back inside, but John's the one who gets to him first, who presses his lips to Rodney's before Rodney can get a word out, before he can meet John halfway. John slides his fingers along Rodney's jaw, anchoring them behind his ears (pressing against those same soft spots), kissing Rodney hot and lush and open and wanting, pulling back and then leaning in again, making it six kisses, seven, eight, until Rodney loses count, until John pulls back one more time, just far enough to say, "You win."


End file.
